Editing literature to conform to current custom

[ssk7882]

Amanda wrote:

> So revisionism is okay for children's books. Just children's books?

Revisionism is okay for any books, as far as I'm concerned, so long
as the nature of the revision is duly marked.  Translation is, after
all, a form of revisionism.  So is the deletion of obscenities from
films which are to be aired on Network television.  I just don't have 
a problem with that.  

When people are interested enough to seek out the original source 
material, then they do so, whether this source material is 
unranslated Chaucer, Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," 
or the N-17 rated "Director's Cut" of a film that was released to the 
theaters only in a toned-down R-rated version.  Or, for that matter, 
the British editions of the Harry Potter books.

I do agree with you that when revisions are not marked as such, then 
that is problematic.  That, to my mind, really does constitute a 
violation of the author, as it sets forth others' words as his own.  
I expect for abridgements, translations and revisions to be clearly 
marked as such; when they are not, I too find it troubling.

As for Kipling, today at work (I work in a bookshop) I hunted down
a few copies of _Just So Stories,_ curious to see how this revision
had been handled in the editions that we have in stock.  I did indeed
find a 1996 edition of the book published by HarperCollins (under
their "Books of Wonder" imprint) that had revised the offending
sentence to read: "Plain black's good enough for me."  There was
no footnote, nor could I find anywhere any mention that this was
a revised edition.

I agree with Amanda that this is unacceptable.  Revised editions
really ought, IMO, to be marked as such.

All of the other editions that we had in stock had retained Kipling's 
original text.  One of them, a Weathervane edition from 1978, had a 
publisher's note at the beginning, acknowledging that some of 
Kipling's vocabulary was offensive by contemporary standards: "The 
language and references are those of Kipling; though they are no 
longer in vogue, they are of historical interest and literary note."  
None of these editions, however, was as obviously marketed to 
children as the HarperCollins edition was.


> Ban things if you must, but ban the true words the author wrote; 
> leave them their integrity. Kipling's name is on words he did not 
> write. 

So is Dostoevsky's.  

As you may know from the main list, I am not ordinarily a big fan of 
authorial intent <g>.  Nonetheless, I do generally assume that most 
authors want their works to be *read.*  By as many people as possible,
in as many languages as possible, for as many years as possible.  
Most of them, I dare say, would like to believe that people will 
still be reading their words long after they themselves have passed 
on.

Kipling had no way of knowing what effects his use of the word 
"nigger" would have on contemporary audiences.  Had he known, he 
likely would have chosen his vocabulary somewhat differently.  The 
fact of the matter is that that word is *extremely* hurtful and 
upsetting to many people.  Its use alone can cause a reader to throw 
a book aside in disgust or outrage.  Its use alone can cause parents 
to reject a book as unsuitable reading material for their children.  

So I just can't feel that in this case, the bowdlerization is horribly
unfair to the author, or that it is such a terrible assault on 
Kipling's integrity.  If I were Kipling, I think that I would far 
prefer for my works to continue to be read by their intended audience 
than to be cast aside due to a change in linguistic connotation that 
I had somehow failed to predict when I sat down to write sometime 
around the turn of the last century. 

Imagine, for example, that the word in question was "cunt," and that 
it was being used as a relatively value-neutral term for "woman."  
"Oh, black's good enough for a cunt."  Would you want your children 
reading this text?

Well, maybe you would, and maybe you wouldn't.  But many parents 
wouldn't. In fact, I dare say that a book using that particular word 
would be most unlikely to find itself on the shelves of the 
children's section of many public libraries, or in the reading rooms 
of many primary schools.  The book would not find its way into the 
hands of many children at all, regardless of its literary merits, 
because it would contain vocabulary that we as a society have deemed 
highly offensive and therefore unsuitable for children.


> It just seems to me that once you start changing the past to fit 
> the present, you have begun the long slow slide to the Ministry of 
> Truth (or whichever it was, it's been a long time since I waded 
> through 1984).

But we engage in this particular form of censorship all the time, do 
we not?  We rate movies based on vocabulary: films containing "bad 
language" are given a rating to indicate that they may be 
inappropriate for children.  Theaters will simply not allow children 
in to *see* films which carry "adult" enough ratings.  There are 
words that you will never hear in the US on network television.  
There are other words that you may hear, but only after "Prime Time," 
when it is assumed that younger viewers will be safely asleep.  There 
are web sites that endeavor to restrict access to younger people due 
to the feeling that their content might be inappropriate for 
children.  Libraries make decisions on which books to keep in 
the "children's section" and which in the "adult's section" based on 
a number of factors, one of which is the specific vocabulary used in 
the text.  Publishers decide how to market books based on the same 
criteria.  You will not have much success in getting a children's 
book published if it is riddled with the word "fuck."  

There are books that are "retold" for children, and there are films 
that sanitize stories for children, and there are alternate versions 
of films that have been edited to make them more suitable for 
children so that they can achieve a wider audience, or (in the US) so 
that they may be shown on network television. 

Does all this sort of thing really strike you as a step down the 
slippery slope to the totalitarian nightmare state?  I'm pretty 
nervous about civil liberties myself, you know, but frankly there are 
things far higher up on my list of "Things To Lie Awake Nights 
Worrying About" than the efforts to keep "bad language" from reaching 
the ears of young children.


> I stood back and let my children risk falling, when the danger was 
> not tremendous, so that they could learn to balance. I stand and 
> watch them ride bikes and know they could take a tumble. I let them 
> climb trees and know they could fall. I will let them read books, 
> unedited, and know they can draw their own conclusions. 

Do you let them see movies that have been rated "R" for language?  Or 
to look at pornographic magazines?

People vary a good deal when it comes to what they want their 
children to be exposed to, and at what age.  As a society, the only
fair way to deal with this fact is to try to achieve some sort of 
consensus regarding what language and concepts we consider 
"appropriate" for certain age levels.  When works of media cross
the lines that we have drawn, then we apply ratings, or we try to 
restrict children's access to the material, or we try to sanitize the 
material to make it better match our conceptions of what is fit for 
youthful consumption.

So I suppose that I'm just wondering now: do *all* of these measures 
bother you?  Or is it only the editing of text that gets your goat?


> What if, 100 years from now, the term "wizard" took on negative 
> connotations and some publisher decided that children would be 
> traumatized by having to read it and possibly add it to their 
> vocabulary, and revisited the Harry Potter books? It is a similar 
> scenario.

It is.

If the connotative meaning of the word "wizard" had changed in the 
same way that the connotative meaning of the word "nigger" has, then 
I would *certainly* not be bothered by the decision to revise the 
books.  I would applaud it.  Such revisions would keep the books in 
general circulation and prevent them from being relegated to the dust 
bins of "historical interest."  They would both preserve their status 
as living children's literature and maintain their accessability to a 
twenty-second century audience.  To my mind, these are all Good 
Things.

As with Kipling, I would certainly expect for there to be some note 
acknowledging that the changes had been made, and I would be irked if 
this were omitted.  I would also certainly hope that the original 
text would still be available to those who wished to read the 
books in their original form.  But would I object to the publication 
of a revised edition?  Heck, no!  I'd be all for it.



-- Elkins